Jul 11, 2009

VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN SHOULD HAVE VIRAL DELIVERY

Viral delivery is critical in viral marketing campaigns.

Viral can be word of mouth delivered and enhanced online to reach a large number of people in a short term. Just like a flu virus in humans, viral marketing replicates and propagates itself online. Nowadays, many companies use YouTube, Facebook, MySpace groups to enhance awareness of their brand and can effectively market their product or service using the Internet. Online social networking offers an ideal communication environment to spread the word and take viral marketing to the success.

Let’s talk a viral marketing campaign - Wal-Mart’s Facebook Presence targets students well. This is an viral marketing campaign example using online social networking site to reach their specific target audience.

Wal-mart launched a Facebook group targeting college students getting ready to going back to school. There are links to a supply checklist and links that go back to walmart.com’s music, green shopping area, and information about its new “site to store” service. Also, the killer “app” on the site is available. This is a Roommate Style Match Quiz which asks questions such as, “What is your favorite way to study?” and “If your life were a movie, what genre would it be?” If you took the quiz and it turns out you are a “Brain-Stormer”.

Most importantly, Wal-mart understands Facebook groups are sizable audience for marketers to pursue and the interactive, social nature. The Style Match Quiz not only enables you to take the quiz, but you can also post it to your profile and send it to friends. Thus, through viral marketing, Wal-Mart is able to spread the word about its business quickly and in a cost-effective manner.

Articles in Reuters: Wal-Mart using Facebook to win back-to-school sales:
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN0843464220070809?feedType=RSS

Wal-Mart: Back-to-College Campagins Photos in flickr:

VIRAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN SHOULD HAVE MEDIUMS

Viral mediums are one of the key components in viral marketing campaigns.
Most viral mediums include video clips, images, interactive games, and even text, can help express and share the idea quickly.

For example, if pictures are worth a thousand words, communicating a message through image or video might allow people to share and download the message all around world.

Let’s see the Barack Obama presidential campaign of 2008 brilliantly used social networking sites to deliver its messages to tens of millions of people across the United States. In this viral marketing campaign, the messages were “Hope” and “Change we can believe in”. The viral mediums can take many forms: the “HOPE” poster, official Barack Obama Web site, (containing policy papers, blogs, tax savings calculator, event information, and so on), and videos.

Barack Obama has implemented viral marketing techniques throughout his site. Barack Obama use different viral mediums such as video, articles, poster to convey the message to reach a tremendous number of target audience.

Link to Barack Obama Video: “Yes We Can”


Link to Barack Obama Web site:
http://www.barackobama.com/

Link to Barack Obama “Hope” poster:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/2238959127/

Viral Marketing Obama 01

Viral Marketing Obama 02